The Missing Sister Page 26

  “After all that—is there anyone worse?”

  She dips her chin. “Depends. Did you find my bordels note?”

  Mathieu. And the large scratch across his chest, from Angela, at the speakeasy brothel. “I did. I thought maybe Mathieu was working with Jean-Luc and they were involved in human trafficking down here.”

  She laughs, but her eyes remain tight. “I don’t know about this Jean-Luc, but Mathieu was. The brothel couldn’t survive without trafficking victims—although some women choose to be there. They think it’s better than on the streets. Mathieu got a little . . . aggressive the last time I saw him, when I was researching the different catacombs entrances. The clue I left—I was hoping you would see the manhole in the cubed entryway and stop before going inside. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  I shake my head. “I’m just glad you’re okay. And I’m beyond ready to leave this place.”

  “Same.” She places a foot on the first ladder rung, and that’s when the tiny voice inside me that’s been anticipating this moment raises its hand.

  “Shouldn’t we go to the police before flying out?” I ask. “We have time. Maybe we should tell them about the brothel, all of this.” I wave a hand around us. “There’s no guarantee we can even get on the same flight.” If the women in the brothel are victims of trafficking, I want to ensure they get help. But the desire isn’t wholly based in selflessness; we killed someone. Despite it being done in extreme self-defense, Seb is dead.

  Angela shakes her head, then drops back down. “The police already know about the brothel. Mathieu said some of them are patrons, and it’s only the Pollyanna cops they worry about. I need to get out of here. I can’t stay in this country one second longer. Besides, I killed Seb. I did the actual act, and the police must think I’m involved in Manu’s murder, given my history with her—just like Seb wanted. It looks like a pattern. I can’t risk it.” She comes to my side where I continue to stand in the middle of the hub.

  Imagine me, reluctant to leave underground.

  “Shay, I don’t know if you ever liked being a twin.” She waves off my protests. “But I think you like being a sister. Do this for me, please. Trust me, as your sister. Leaving is the best solution for you and for me. It’s time to go.” She lifts her hands, palms up. The yellow track lighting is nonexistent here, but the flashlight shows that blood stains her palms. The pair of us will never make it through the airport. Identical twins, filthy and bloody—we’ll have all eyes on us from the moment we hobble through the doors of Charles de Gaulle.

  I take her hands and cringe at their slippery feel. “Angela, I love being your sister and your twin, always have. Even if I showed it in different ways. I’m sorry I failed you over the last few years, after Mom and Dad died, and the last week. But that changes now. You’re taking the plane ticket and my passport. I’ll stay behind to make sure the police know everything they need, and to tell them you did what you did in self-defense. I choose you this time, Gel.”

  Angela’s face goes slack. “Sh—Shayna, no,” she stammers. “No, we’re going together. I can’t leave you.”

  Maybe Nour will visit me in jail. Or Valentin will sneak me croissants. “I’ll be fine. It can’t take more than a week to sort through everything. I’ll be back home before you’re unpacked.” I dig into my messenger bag for my passport and hand it to her.

  “We’re going together.” She pushes it back. “I can’t take that.”

  “It’s our best shot. There’s no way we can both get out on one passport, and any kind of damage to a passport invalidates it—yours won’t work. You’ve served enough time down here.”

  She hesitates, examining my resolve, probably gauging whether I’ll crack. “I don’t know what to say. It’s been so long that I’ve felt . . . a lot of things. Abandoned, disregarded. I guess, jealous.” She pauses to tuck a ratty strand of hair back into the fray. “I was wrong. It was shortsighted to hold on to that for so long. It’s no secret I’ve always had issues with Mom and Dad, but . . . I would spend another night here to get them back.”

  I stare at my sister, not knowing how to reply. “They . . . they loved us. They loved you.”

  “They loved you more, though.”

  I shake my head. “They weren’t perfect. No one is. We just had more in common for a lot of our lives. I’m absolutely guilty of exploiting that at times, and making you feel . . . I don’t know. The odd lady out.”

  A smile pinches Angela’s face at the self-description she often used.

  Deep breath. “I’m so sorry. It’s my fault that they—”

  “Hey, don’t.” She shakes her head. “Let’s not do this now.”

  “No—I’ve been waiting three years to say this face-to-face. Upright,” I add, recalling our conversation on the ground of the twin bones room. My voice falters. Tears well in my eyes, blurring Angela’s already dim features. “It’s my fault that Mom and Dad died. If I hadn’t asked them to come get me . . . they’d still be alive. It’s been eating away at me, and I understand if you can’t ever forgive me. But I need to say it. I’m sorry.”

  Tears run down my sister’s face. She’s quiet a moment, and I feel the familiar ache in my chest, anticipating the ax of guilt to my bruised heart, exactly what I deserve. She fixes me with dark eyes. “Shayna. You are not responsible for their deaths.”

  I don’t reply. My entire body tenses, too scared to break the moment.

  She steps closer. “You couldn’t have known what would happen. It’s not your fault.”

  Silence swims between us as I begin to tremble. I let another moment pass, give her the time to add a but or to take back her words. She doesn’t.

  “Really?” I choke out.

  She shakes her head. “It’s not your fault, Shayna.”

  A sob escapes my clenched throat, and I lift two hands to my face. Her words of forgiveness are sweeter than anything I’d imagined or hoped for. I’d convinced myself they would never come. “It is my fault—no, it is. But . . . I’m working on moving forward from that.”

  Angela wipes her cheeks. “I’ll help you.”

  She takes my hands, and for a moment I forget where we are. Warmth fills my chest seeing her this way again after so long—loving, kind, the Angela who can brighten a room by entering, the effusive sister and the balance to my good, my bad, and then some.

  “Angela, what changed for you here? You seem so . . . happy.”

  She gives a bottled laugh. “I am. Or, I was. At first, being so far away was the answer. I no longer had to wonder whether you cared or Mom and Dad cared, by the way you included me in something or didn’t. There was no ambiguity; there was nine hours of time difference. It made me really take stock of our interactions and see them better, not listen to the usual voice that questioned all that. I learned to trust more of what you were saying before they died. Then, after, I really was alone. And I said some things I shouldn’t have. And I’m sorry for that. The distance and isolation, then, forced me to dig deep, and discover some—”

  “Stability from within?” I finish.

  “Yeah . . . that’s it.”

  We share a smile. “Twin thought processes and twin emotional issues, huh?”

  Her soft laugh mingles with mine. “Funny how that goes.”

  I allow myself the first deep breath since we trudged out of the room. “Well. You’ve got a flight to catch.”

  “I have to admit,” she says, “I don’t quite understand the changes you’ve undergone, either, and I don’t understand why you’re sacrificing yourself like this for me. But thank you.” She throws her arms around me with more strength than I would have guessed, had I not just witnessed the extent of it when faced with death.

  “You’re my sister, Gel,” I say, simply. There’s no better answer.

  My fingerprints aren’t on the scalpel, the murder weapon, and the surveillance video will show the truth: Angela killed Seb in self-defense, and Seb was the serial killer all along. I’ll be released within
days. I can do this for Angela after all these years of her feeling slighted. After she made the ultimate sacrifice—taking on the burden of Seb’s death, and doing what I know in my heart I never could to ensure our escape and safety.

  “Can I ask you something?” I release her from the hug and pull back. “Do you remember that day on the beach, when . . . when you tried to bury me in the sand?”

  Her eyebrows pinch together. “You mean the day you almost died by jellyfish sting?”

  “What?”

  Angela steps back. “You got stung so badly you couldn’t walk the two blocks to the house. You wouldn’t let me leave you to go get help, so I washed your legs and arms with seawater. Used sand to remove the venom. You were burned everywhere, so I had to cover you in sand and scrape off the jelly stingers with a seashell.”

  Jellyfish. I’ve been terrified of jellyfish since I was a kid, when a huge bloom came into La Jolla Cove. The normally light-blue waterline was covered in translucent pink and purple mushroom tops for days. In my mind, I’d separated the bloom’s arrival and the pain of the jellyfish sting from the trauma of my sister trying to suffocate me, standing above me with a soda can and pail empty of sand and a vacant expression; I remembered both events without realizing they were the same memory. Understanding clicks into place. Almost. “Why was I pinned? Beneath two massive branches?”

  Angela shakes her head. “You were in so much pain, you couldn’t lie still. You were scratching the stingers and spreading the venom. You were near delirious. You don’t remember any of that? Mom bathed you in vinegar afterward.”

  We look at each other. My sister wasn’t trying to harm me or acting out because I stole her doll that morning. She was trying to help me. Relief courses down my limbs. Through a watery gaze, I see Angela’s reassuring, if confused, face. “The logs were there to hold you down. You were always stronger than you think.”

  She gives me another squeeze, then limps up the ladder rungs leading to the manhole cover. My passport juts from her back pocket. We agree we can’t both be seen emerging when it’s not yet dark. At the top of the rungs, she pushes, grunts against the cast iron, but it won’t budge. Panic squeezes my heart, and I climb up beside her. We push together. After her two weeks of hiding from Seb and my exhaustion, it takes intense effort, but we manage to lift then push it to the side. She kisses my cheek, an arm slung around my neck. “Thank you, Shayna.”

  I pat her hand and feel the bones of her wrist. “See you soon.” Her feet disappear above into the red-streaked sky, then she’s gone.

  Alone in the catacombs, I lean back against a rock wall for the agreed-upon five minutes to give her a proper head start. I wait for the pummeling fear to surge, to take my breath and clench my stomach. But it doesn’t. The most frightening thing I could ever experience has already occurred—and the most euphoric. Even if I’m not certain what I would have done, I’m grounded in the knowledge that Angela did what she had to. She did it for us. And we’ll choose each other from now on.

  Chapter 34

  Jean-Luc found me within minutes. The time that elapsed between Angela escaping above and Jean-Luc climbing into the tunnels below was barely enough time to say Amélie. I listened in a daze as he explained he was never actually employed by the American embassy; to the contrary, he was an officer with the United Nations unit investigating international trafficking.

  I didn’t understand at first—blamed my disorientation on dehydration, trauma, shock—but he kept going in slow, measured tones until I had no choice but to believe him. My team suspected the catacombs were a possible point of transit for traffickers. When Sebastien Bronn was spotted exiting the catacombs from an unusual point of entry, we became interested in him; when he began spending time with Angela, a young woman, we added him to our watch list. I have stuck with you, Shayna, in the hopes of learning more about him and his ties to Paris’s black market.

  My fingers were numb from the cold, but my heart surged with this knowledge. The newspaper headline in the lobby of Angela’s building, the brothel madam believing I was police and almost kicking me out, the ticker along the cab’s television screen. Jean-Luc wasn’t stalking Angela or me to abduct us; he was working to stop human trafficking.

  While Jean-Luc wasn’t able to prevent Angela from being abducted, he had been following me all week, certain that Seb would try something. He lost me after the club Friday night, and it took him a few hours before he realized I went underground.

  Babbling with relief at this point, I told him everything—Seb kidnapping us, his plans to find a cure for chemical attacks, his emulation of the human traffickers’ mode of operation, Angela being alive—then stopped short. He asked where Angela was now.

  Shadows surrounded us then but none as thick as the partition that dropped between us. With two hours left before ensuring Angela had a shot out of here, I only had half-truths to offer. Whatever we shared during the week together, it was as different people. Even as the memory of his arms around me, and the soft fabric of his shirt against my cheek, pulsed behind my eyelids.

  I spoke to the void over his shoulder. “I’m not sure where she is.”

  Jean-Luc didn’t blink. “Is that true?”

  “Between the two of us, I think I have a better record of telling the truth. You’ve been lying to me this whole week.”

  He licked his lips. “Not the whole week, Shayna. I shared things with you I haven’t shared with anyone else.”

  A depressed silence filled the already dank space. “Something still doesn’t add up,” I began. “Seb wasn’t a trafficker. He was a sick man who thought he could find a cure for mustard gas. Why did he write a fake email pointing to you as Angela’s attacker?”

  Jean-Luc peered down the cavern I’d just crawled out from. “My guess is to drive you away from me. If he had people following you, I’ll bet he knew you were spending time with me and that I was linked to the UN. Probably to throw off the authorities and yourself and make it as hard as he did to catch him.”

  Fatigue draped across me at that point. Seb had been single-minded to the end.

  I asked to wait up above for the police and the UN officers Jean-Luc told me were coming. When they arrived, they ventured down two by two, like Noah’s chosen investigators. The sun dipped behind large buildings across the square, the tip of the Eiffel Tower blazing farther beyond.

  When their team emerged a good while later, Jean-Luc crouched before me and waved Seb’s silver laptop. He had watched some of the surveillance footage of our captivity before we escaped and found video of each of Seb’s other experiments. He asked me to share any information I might have on Angela’s whereabouts, to get to the bottom of things and learn the whole truth—“Shayna, please.” I repeated the same line—that Angela had disappeared, left me below, and I couldn’t tell him where she was now. He spoke with an earnestness, a vulnerability, that reminded me of our time at Angela’s apartment and the Deux Moulins restaurant. For a moment, the butterflies in my stomach fluttered their wings, waiting for the cue to commit to a full swell and build a storm of pleasant tension. The impulse to pick up back where we left off and before I read Seb’s fake email—back when I thought I was the one with secrets—was there. Knowing I remained capable of those emotions, of that connection with a virtual stranger, was reassuring. Jean-Luc and I had almost crossed that line, from strangers to familiars—maybe lovers. But that time had passed. Aching filled my chest at the thought before cautious hope replaced it. The world was wide, and I might finally be ready to explore it again.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  His shoulders dropped. “Ten twenty.”

  Relief bloomed in my chest, and I clutched the blanket I was given tighter around my shoulders. If Angela hadn’t made it past customs, Jean-Luc would have known about it by then. Anything on that laptop would only substantiate that her actions were in self-defense. The police might have to hire a video specialist, but someone could check the eye color of the twin holding the
scalpel. Mine have heterochromia—two different colors of green and brown. Staying behind proves that I chose Angela this time, our collective safety, what’s best for both of us. And finally exonerates me in her eyes—both brown.

  “Shayna?” a strong voice calls from the corridor of filing cabinets that leads out and into the lobby.

  The comfort of the police holding cell took me by surprise. Its singular cushy bench might serve as a bed in a pinch, and a straight-backed, carved wooden chair in the corner could have been found in Delphine Rousseau’s office. Nothing adorns the stone walls, but a stack of outdated magazines fills a woven basket at my feet. They’ve let me keep my own clothing for now, and I was thankful to retain the wool blanket I was given at the catacombs.

  I raise my head and lurch backward; a petite woman, a ghost, stands at the metal bars, like some rendition of Jacob Marley with glasses. Asymmetrically cut black hair and the bedazzled jean jacket she wears can only identify her as one person.

  “Chang? How are you—?”

  “Oh, I’m alive, all right. Barely.” She lowers her voice and beckons me closer. A sense of déjà vu washes over me as I cross the ten-foot space, just like the day I met her in the apartment building. She casts another glance at the lobby, then reaches through the bars to pat my arm. “How are you?”

  “Chang!” Gleeful laughter tumbles from my mouth, a long trill that surprises us both, and I hug her small frame. My throat clamps shut, and I have to blink back new tears. “How is that possible? Seb killed you.”

  “That Sebastien was too transparent. Obsessed with the catacombs and those rooms since he was a kid. He used to tell me all his discoveries when we ran into each other in the tunnels.” She muses on these things like it was a year instead of just hours ago he tried to kill us both. “After he took you girls, he came back for me. But I climbed into a series of pocket spaces he didn’t know about and hid until I was sure he was gone. I passed out for a while—concussions will do that—and by the time I got out, it was Sunday afternoon.” She rubs her shoulder, massaging between large costume rubies on her shoulder pads. “I called the police right away and told them your location. Did they get to you quickly?” The skin below her eyes is a purplish black, half-moons reflecting her own battle back to fresh air. A long red scratch covers her neck from ear to clavicle.